“Marshall is a master of the thriller laced with the supernatural. His most recent novel displays his great strengths as a writer: a compelling pot, characters who are completely believable and unforgettable, and sharp, smart insights into the nature of modern life.”

— New Orleans Times-Picayune

It’s not the craft and skill that Michael Marshall Smith displays in his stories that I object to. It’s not the easy wit, or the comfortable way he deploys language as a weapon. It’s not even that way he can conjure people so real in so few words. It’s that, when a Mike Smith short story is over, it’s pretty much guaranteed there will be some moment, scene or revelation frozen in the back of my mind that I’ll never be able to get out of my head, not even if I scrub it with wire wool so it bleeds.

— Neil Gaiman

Just when you think there’s nothing new under the sun in the world of the suspense novel, along comes one hell of a nasty spider called The Straw Men. It’s brilliantly written and scary as hell — a masterpiece.